Top 5 Books on: Ecclesiology

Inspired by Steve McCoy’s series, I’d like to know what your top 5 books on ecclesiology are. I know this is a broad topic, but just feel free to choose the 5 most influential books on the church that you have read.

1. Confessions of a Reformission Rev (Mark Driscoll)
2. The Prevailing Church (Randy Pope)
3. Sharpening the Focus of the Church (Gene Getz)
4. Total Church (Steve Timmis & Tim Chester)
5. Outgrowing the Ingrown Church (C. John Miller)

1. Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture
2. Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church
3. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic
4. Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God
5. Barry Harvey, Can These Bones Live?: A Catholic Baptist Engagement with Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, and Social Theory

(on the theological nature of the church)
1. The Church, Edmund Clowney
2. Introduction to Ecclesiology, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen
(practical)
3. As the Father Sent Me, So I am Sending You: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology, Michael Goheen’s doctoral dissertation
4. The Forgotten Ways, Alan Hirsch
5. Transforming Mission, David J. Bosch (missiology book, but with profound insight on the nature of the church as a missional entity)

I will recommend one book that surveys the various views on the formation of Pauline Churches:
What Are They Saying about the Formaion of Pauline Churches. This will give you a brief introduction into all of the books that were written on the models that Paul may have used to help form his churches. Brief book, only 100 pages or so, but chocked full of sources.
Another good one: Paul’s Idea of Community by Robert Banks.

The Church – Ed Clowney
Total Church – Timmis and Chester
God’s New Community – Graham Beynon
The Church in the Bible and the World – DA Carson (ed.)
Redeemer Church Planting Manual – Keller and Thompson